It is easy to create a medical case for drug weight loss drugbuster, such as Weg’s and Zepound, who have shown to prevent heart attacks and strokes and save lives.
But for employers and government programs that are asked to pay for drugs, the financial reason is less clear to them. Are the benefits of drugs for their huge costs?
The answer right now is not, according to a New study Published on Friday in Jama Health Forum, scientists from the University of Chicago.
In order to be considered as cost -effective measures used by economists, scientists would have to reduce the price of Weg’s Novo Nordisk by more than 80 percent to $ 127 per month. And Eli Lilly’s Zepound would be cost -effective only if its price dropped by almost the third, to $ 361 per month. (Zepbound guaranteed a higher price, scientists said because it brought more benefits in clinical evaluation.)
“There is no doubt that drugs show huge benefits for health,” said David Kim, the economic economic economist at the University of Chicago and the head of the study, which was financed by government grants. “The problem is that the price is too high.”
There is a widespread hope that drugs will be effectively valid in the long run for patients to be healthier and prevent expensive medical accounts. It is not yet clear whether it will prove to be true.
Eli Lilly refused to find out a new study and claimed to ignore the results of several clinical trials in which the company had benefited from the company. Instead, she used “a limited set of data to draw extensive conclusions,” said Courtney Kasinger, a company spokesman. And Liz Skrbkova, spokesman for Novo Nordisk, said there were “no generally accepted Prague for what determines that the drug is cost -effective”.
Employers and government programs pay different prices for drugs and these figures are almost always kept by mystery. Scientists at the University of Chicago estimated that the Wegovy price was an average of $ 700 per month, compared to the $ 520 for ZEPBound.
Huge drug demand has caused a balloon for employers’ drugs, which forced some companies to impose a restriction on who could get them or stop covering the drugs completely. Con Edison, the energy usefulness that serves in New York and Westchester County, has recently said that rates need to be increased to compensate for increased expenses that included an increase in weight loss expenses.
Medicare covers medicines for patients with diabetes and a much smaller subset of people who are afraid of both obesity and other health, such as heart problem or sleep apnea. Congress resisted the expansion of coverage for millions of other older people who are overweight or obese, because it would be so expensive.
Patients who pay for drugs using their own money instead of going through the insurance face, various prices; Some pay more than $ 1,300 per month. But for a low dose of zepbound can pay patients 350 $ From the pocket, the price for the University of Chicago was considered to be cost -effective.
To come up with their estimates, scientists launched computer simulations of what could happen if people who were overweight or obese took one of the drugs for weight loss for the rest of their lives. Based on the results of clinical studies, the model assumed benefits that could increase in the long run. For example, many overweight patients would never have become obese. Other patients would avert diabetes or heart disease. They would remain productive and outside the hospital.
These advantages have contributed to many years of good health-tzv. Life years adapted to quality. Many health economists think it is reasonable for the company to pay $ 100,000 for each such healthy year. But in the model, the years of good health provided to Wegovy and Zepbound have much more.
Drug societies often push the cost -effectiveness effectiveness against such analysis and claim that they cannot capture the actual value drugs that can bring to patients and societies. Yet such studies sometimes finance. And Analysis funded by Novo NordiskAs with scientists from the University of Chicago, he found that the weight loss cure was cost -effective.
